Human Rights News / Indonesia, West Papua / 17 July 2025 

A new documentary reveals the devastating impact of Indonesia’s National Strategic Project (PSN) in Merauke, Papua Selatan Province, exposing how large-scale agricultural expansion under the guise of national food security results in the systematic violation of indigenous rights and environmental degradation. The project aims to convert at least 1.6 million hectares of indigenous Malind territory into rice fields and sugarcane plantations, backed by heavy equipment and military presence. Indigenous communities report land seizures without giving their free, prior informed consent (FPIC), while military forces secure the project areas, underscoring the militarisation of development in West Papua.

The film highlights growing resistance from indigenous Malind communities, who reject all forms of corporate investment on their customary lands. In March 2025, over 250 participants at the ‘Merauke Solidarity’ forum condemned the PSN as a corporate-driven initiative that disregards indigenous rights and causes irreversible environmental harm. The project has already triggered deforestation, water contamination, and loss of livelihoods. A government decree has allowed the conversion of more than 13,000 hectares of forest, including protected areas and peatlands, raising serious concerns about Indonesia’s climate commitments.

Despite widespread protests and criticism, government officials, including President Prabowo Subianto, continue to promote the Merauke food estate as a modern agricultural hub. The project aligns with broader patterns of repression across West Papua, where opposition is met with violence and intimidation. Since August 2024, demonstrations against PSN and transmigration have faced heavy-handed crackdowns, reflecting a national strategy that prioritises economic interests over indigenous survival.

The documentary serves as a timely and urgent record of these developments, revealing the complex interplay between state power, corporate interests, and indigenous resistance. It underscores the need for international scrutiny and intervention, warning that the unchecked expansion of PSN projects will exacerbate land conflicts, environmental destruction, and cultural extinction in West Papua.

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

This article is sourced from The Lowy Institue’s The Interpreter first published 4/7/25

While Chinese firms capitalise on the country’s resources, the
social and environmental damage lies squarely with Jakarta.

Smoke rises from Weda Bay Industrial Park, a major nickel processing and smelting hub in Central Halmahera, on 13 April 2025 (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

Published 4 Jul 2025 

• China
• Indonesia
• Human rights

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The destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests and reefs in the name of green energy is a tragedy, but not one that can be pinned solely on China.

Yes, China has played a central and highly visible role in Indonesia’s nickel boom. It is the largest consumer of Indonesian nickel, the primary financier behind smelters and industrial parks, and a dominant foreign actor influencing how extraction unfolds. But Chinese companies do not force their way into Indonesia’s forests – they are merely capitalising on the rules, and loopholes, established by the Indonesian state.

To understand how the world’s largest nickel reserves are being transformed into sacrifice zones, we must begin with a critical truth: the rush to exploit these resources is not driven solely by foreign demand, but by domestic politics and governance choices made in Jakarta.

While Chinese firms certainly profit from this permissive and often corrupt environment, it is Indonesian authorities who enable and perpetuate it.

It is Indonesia that grants mining permits – often through processes vulnerable to corruption. It is Indonesia that oversees (or fails to oversee) environmental and labour assessments. It is Indonesia that silences youth activists and sidelines Indigenous communities when they speak out against these projects. While Chinese firms certainly profit from this permissive and often corrupt environment, it is Indonesian authorities who enable and perpetuate it.

A recent case from Raja Ampat, a remote archipelago in West Papua, underscores the stakes of Indonesia’s nickel rush. Last month, Indigenous youth disrupted a mining summit in Jakarta, holding signs reading “Nickel Mines Destroy Lives”. Their viral protest, under the hashtag #SaveRajaAmpat, drew attention to the threat that nickel extraction poses to their home. Several protesters were detained.

Raja Ampat, renowned for its marine biodiversity and Indigenous communities, is already reeling from the impacts of nickel mining. Of the four companies licensed to operate in the region, PT Anugerah Surya Pratama – linked to China’s Vansun Group – cleared protected forests and polluted the sea around Manuran Island. Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment confirmed these violations. Only after public outcry did the government revoke the permit, but by then, much of the damage had already been done.

The mining boom is not confined to far-flung Papua. In Central Sulawesi, Morowali has become the beating heart of Indonesia’s nickel processing industry. The Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP), largely financed and constructed by Chinese companies such as Tsingshan Holding Group, stands as a flagship Belt and Road project. But its meteoric rise has come at an enormous cost: air and water pollution, deforestation, and rising greenhouse gas emissions in what was once promoted as a “green” zone.

The social toll is just as severe. Labour conditions at IMIP have raised alarms, with reports of long hours, meagre pay, poor safety standards, and frequent accidents. Tensions between Chinese and Indonesian workers have flared into violence on multiple occasions. Yet despite these concerns, the park continues to expand. The economic incentives for all parties are simply too great, and regulatory enforcement is often undermined by corruption. Indonesia’s 2020 ban on nickel ore exports – intended to promote domestic value-added processing – successfully attracted foreign capital. But the regulatory framework governing labour rights, environmental protections, and community engagement has failed to keep pace.

A similar pattern has taken root in Weda Bay, Halmahera. There, vast industrial complexes built by Chinese and French firms have reshaped the landscape. Forests have been razed, rivers contaminated, and traditional livelihoods upended. Promises of economic opportunity have been hollowed out as locals report being excluded from decision-making and witnessing a growing divide between investors and communities.

No labour abuses, environmental violations, or community displacements occur without institutional neglect – often compounded by corruption.

Indonesia’s failures are not isolated – they are systemic. Environmental impact assessments are routinely manipulated, labour standards poorly enforced, and Indigenous voices sidelined. Corruption facilitates these breaches, creating an environment where compliance is optional. The most powerful investors – Chinese state-linked enterprises among them – adapt accordingly.

Still, this does not absolve China. As the global leader in battery production and the architect of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has committed to making its development model “green and sustainable”. Yet it continues to finance and profit from operations that destroy ecosystems, exploit labour, and marginalise communities. What Beijing would never tolerate on its own soil – clear-cutting protected forests or operating in unsafe conditions – it enables abroad.

If China truly intends to lead the global energy transition, it must hold its companies accountable. This means refusing to finance environmentally destructive projects, setting higher standards for overseas operations, and enforcing consequences for corporate misconduct – not just when global outcry forces its hand.

But ultimately, the responsibility lies with Indonesia. No Chinese company can operate in Indonesia without state approval. No labour abuses, environmental violations, or community displacements occur without institutional neglect – often compounded by corruption. If Indonesia hopes to be seen as a responsible steward of its natural wealth, it must overhaul how mining projects are licensed, monitored, and enforced. It must empower Indigenous peoples and protect workers with the same urgency it grants mining permits.

Indonesia’s nickel boom is a test of the country’s ability to balance economic growth with sustainable governance. From Raja Ampat to Morowali, the impact of unchecked mining is evident – forests are cleared, labour is exploited, and communities are displaced.

We cannot place the blame squarely on China. But we must acknowledge that Indonesia’s governance – and the corruption within it – ultimately sets the terms.

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JULIE WARK

Article courtesy of CounterPunch

There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. 

If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty.

 – Karl Jaspers

What’s the relationship between an emaciated, dying Wondiwoi tree kangaroo(whose small joey in her pouch is also condemned to death) and tooth decay or obesity in a kid in any European city? The world’s perhaps only fifty remaining Wondiwoi tree kangaroos are gorgeous marsupials with large eyes, sweet faces, thick burnt-umber coats, and strong claws for grasping tree branches. Human kids are also gorgeous creatures, often with large eyes, sweet faces, thick overcoats, and grasping hands (especially if there’s a KitKat in sight). But that’s the superficial connection. The underlying, truly dangerous relational bond is palm oil. Each individual, the cute animal and the cute kid, represents the horrors of an insane system of consumption that’s destroying everything it touches on both sides of the story, the kid’s and the tree kangaroo’s.

It’s no news that unhealthy items stack shelves at child-eye level in supermarket checkout queues. You’re waiting, have nothing to do but look at the last tempting offers, so you throw a couple of KitKats into your basket or buy one to quieten a whining kid. KitKats will sweeten your day. They also kill all sorts of beautiful rainforest creatures, and they displace and kill people who once lived on and with the land where their ingredients are now grown. If you buy cigarettes, the packet screeches, with ghastly illustrations, that you’re courting head or neck cancer, and that your smoking can cause fatal lung disease in nonsmokers. KitKat wrappers show no pictures of dying Wondiwoi tree kangaroos or caries in tender little mouths.

I’m singling out KitKats to represent the vast array of products made from palm oil and because it’s among several supposedly seductive products listed in a boycott recently called by more than ninety West Papuan tribes, political organisations, and religious groups. The other products and labels they name are Smarties, Aero chocolate, Oreo biscuits, Ritz crackers, Pantene, and Herbal Essences. But the boycott is about more than a few products that are damaging at both production and consumer ends of the scale. It’s about late capitalist corporate imperialism where industrialists lawlessly operate in boundless, rather than delineated parameters of space and time, aided by the global data (mis)information economy, which splatters its fraudulent spiel everywhere in worldwide linkups. Hence the connection of KitKat with a treeless, starving tree kangaroo.

After being betrayed by the United Nations more than sixty years ago, Melanesian West Papua, occupied by Indonesia ever since, is a particularly poignant case in point. In its increasingly militarised torture mode of governance, the Indonesian regime—now headed by Prabowo Subianto, notorious for his war crimes in East Timor—is the world’s biggest palm oil exporter, to the tune of 47 million tonnes of crude palm oil in 2023, and 54% of global exports. The industry accounts for 4.5% of Indonesian GDP and directly or indirectly employs 16.2 million people. The total area of Indonesian palm oil cultivation is about 25 million hectares (out of 29 million hectares globally, which amounts to approximately 6.7% of the size of the European Union), and plantations covering many million more hectares are planned. In 2023, industrial oil palm plantations in Indonesia expanded by 116,000 hectares, a 54% increase compared with 2022. The largest oil palm project so far is Tanah Merah, in Boven Digoel Regency. Seven companies control the area of 280,000 hectares of which more than 140,000 hectares of land traditionally occupied by the Awyu people will be taken for oil palm production.

In West Papua this destructive extractivism also entails violent social change for the country’s Indigenous peoples. It’s impossible to know how many people have been displaced in the name of “food security” (security for KitKat production) as the Indonesian government is understandably averse to providing statistics of the genocide it has been committing in West Papua for more than sixty years. The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights calculates that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 internally displaced people. Mining, palm plantations, and logging by Indonesian and international companies are protected by the state transmigration programme which creates militarised buffer zones protecting the areas designated for Indonesian government “development” programmes. It’s calculated that Indonesian transmigrants outnumber West Papuans by about ten percent, and approximately 25% of the Indigenous population, or more than 500,000 people have been killed. Needless to say, the demographics represent atrocious human rights violations, including destruction of West Papuan languages and culture.

Taking rainforest land for palm oil monoculture also means taking water. In areas where these plantations are forcefully introduced, women are particularly affected. In West Papua and other parts of the world, they bring water to their villages for activities that sustain community social life and hence its reproductive cycle. When villages disappear with the land and the water, women suffer sexual violence when forced beyond the confines of their traditional safe territory to be exploited as cheap labour on plantations, or when they have to resort to prostitution in shantytowns in order to survive, in a chain of generalised abuse that includes sexually servicing uprooted men who are brought in and also exploited as cheap labour or (in the case of West Papua) as transmigrants.

Here’s an example of how a person eating a KitKat isn’t aware that he or she is also consuming the bravery and resistance of women forest guardians which, now mixed with sugar and trampled into the sludge of what was once rainforest, rots his or her teeth. In October 2023, dozens of women from the Tehit clans of the Afsya people in Kondo district, Sorong Regency, West Papua held an emergency meeting, where they shared and wrote down everything they knew about their community’s special places: where to find good sago, where to cultivate their crops, where to find medicinal plants, where their sacred places were, and all their deep connections with their habitat. But they can’t save this world of community solidarity because in 2014, the Indonesian government granted a concession of 37,000 hectares of what was then 96% intact rainforest to PT Anugerah Sakti Internusa, a subsidiary of the Indonusa Agromulia Groupwhich is owned by Rosna Tjuatja. Subsequent permits gave the company permission to start destroying 14,467 hectares within this concession area and plant millions of oil palm trees.

Meanwhile, Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto who, with a personal fortune of over $130 million and holdings of almost half a million hectares of land, poses as the great champion of planetary “food security”, says that palm oil expansion won’t deforest because “oil palms have leaves”. In fact, clearing forest for a palm plantation releases more CO2 than can be sequestered by growing oil palms on the same land. But the overriding message is that oil palms are fine because they have leaves and we need “indulgent products” that eat up rainforests to rot children’s teeth. Somehow, consumers swallow this rubbish with sweet junk in colourful wrappers. Nestlé, owner of KitKat (now with a KitKat cereal “designed to be enjoyed as an ‘occasional, indulgent’ breakfast option”) has recently fobbed off investor moves to reduce its high levels of salt, sugar, and fats, with an 88% shareholder vote in favour of said high levels. Nestlé, well known for its many human rights abuses, obtained this majority with the argument that any “move away from ‘indulgent products’ could harm its ‘strategic freedom’”. Strategic freedom, leaf-green and sweetly sugar-coated, to kill.

On the other side of the world, shoppers who are sickened by the slaughter of human kin and other animals, about the ravaging of Earth’s environments, can try to observe the West Papuan boycott by checking to see if products contain palm oil. But information overload is a form of lying, a way of bamboozling people, so palm oil is hidden in names like Vegetable Oil, Vegetable Fat, Palm Kernel, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Fruit Oil, Palmate, Palmitate, Palm olein, Glyceryl, Stearate, Stearic Acid, Elaeis Guineensis, Palmitic Acid, Palm Stearine, Palmitoyl Oxostearamide, Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-3, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Sodium Kernelate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate, Hydrated Palm Glycerides, Etyl Palmitate, Octyl Palmitate, Palmityl Alcohol, Laureth-7, Steareth-2, Cocamide MEA (fatty acid-derived) Cocamiede DEA (fatty acid derived), Stearamidopropyldimethylamine, Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride, Isopropylmyristate, Caprylic/capric Trigylceride, Fatty Isethionates (SCI), Alkylpolyglycoside (APG), and Laurylamine oxide. The large number of names behind which palm oil is hidden warns, in itself, what a destructive product it is. People can do their best to boycott these products, but any boycott also requires thinking about whether we actually need them, and how to overthrow the system that produces them, knowing how damaging they are, knowing how the profits are concentrated in ever smaller circles of greedy despoilers, and how these profits are plump with death and mayhem in societies we are supposed not to think about, unless in racist terms, let alone learn from them about their harmonious ways of living on this planet.

In its multifarious disguises, palm oil is everywhere, in about 50% of packaged products sold in supermarkets, from foodstuffs to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste (for rotting teeth), makeup, “beauty” products (thus profiting from exploitation and control of women’s bodies), petfood, and biofuels. In other words, the question of the caries-producing KitKat is also a moral question because governments, political institutions, and the multinational companies they protect are lying to the people they are supposed to represent. Waivered so that corrosive, erosive and literally poisonous (in places like West Papua) food products can keep flooding markets, national and international legal provisions are facilitating the ruination of rainforests and their guardians. Hence, they are not legitimate. It’s pure madness. KitKats are unnecessary. Rainforests and their guardians are more necessary that ever in this age of climate catastrophe. The climate breakdown, “the severe and potentially catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change, including extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and widespread environmental degradation, often used in a context of urgency and alarm” is also a generalised moral breakdown that is accelerating the calamity from which no one will be spared.

Freedom from hunger is a basic human right. But there’s a difference between a hungry child whining for a KitKat in a western supermarket and people, hungry to the point of starvation, who have been displaced to ensure that supermarket shelves can be stocked with KitKats. A couple of dollars satisfy a child who wants a KitKat but nothing will fill the bellies of Indigenous peoples who are displaced from their customary lands, deprived of resources which, more than just filling their bellies, constitute their livelihoods, their culture, community values, and physical and psychological wellbeing. In the language of “development”, this way of life that respects the environment is presented as backward and discardable. So, in the Merauke district, in the name of “national food sovereignty” and supposedly green “renewable energy”, more than a million hectares have been chopped down in the last decade for monocrop oil palm plantations, with the result of massive food insecurity among the local Marindpeople, as anthropologist Sophie Chao describes. No longer able to harvest their traditional rainforest food—fish, game, fruits, sago, and tubers—they are now obliged to subsist on instant noodles, rice, canned foods, and sugary drinks, a diet which, closer to KitKats than forest nutrition, has led to, “Stunting, wasting, and chronic protein-energy malnutrition are particularly high among women and children, rendering them vulnerable to pneumonia, parasitism, bronchitis, and a range of gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal diseases” which are aggravated by “collective feelings of sorrow, grief, pain, and anger”.

Unlike KitKat-producing tree killers, the Marind people understand the rainforest as having a sentient ecology that is manifested in seasonal rhythms and the natural signs of the rainforest, its features, and its dwellers. Every change, every sign tells them about the health of the forest and suggests how to care for it by knowing which animals they should hunt and when, by using the appropriate tracks or river sections, and by harvesting the vegetation in season. This care for the forest’s health is reflected in their own wellbeing. It is a harmonious way of life.

The hungry child in a supermarket can be satisfied with a tooth-rotting treat but hunger for West Papua’s dispossessed Indigenous peoples also means destruction of whole “ecosystems, soils, and water that these plants and animals depend on to survive and thrive in mutual relations of eating and being eaten that operate across species lines”, as Sophie Chao writes. Eating in the rainforest has a social significance expressed in traditional hunting and gathering, food preparing, and consumption practices that feed more than human bodies because they nurture ties between individuals and groups. The fact that there some 250 tribes with their own languages may, for a western shopper in a supermarket (where people rarely speak to or even look at each other), seem to be primitive and hostile fragmentation. Far from it. This is a complex system of democracy, rules and agreements among tribes that has worked well for some 50,000 years. People, identifying with their own tribes and also as West Papuans, have always understood the rules of the system. Lawless junk foods that destroy and replace this intricate system have no social meaning except for being trash and trashing everything.

A kid crying for a KitKat in a supermarket feels only his or her imperious individual need for instant satisfaction. But among the Marind people, hunger is contagious because it’s a social malaise. If one person is weak and malnourished, the group feels undernourished and fragile in what Chao calls “a form of transcorporeal and affective transference”. In rainforest “communities of fate”, the contagion spreads beyond humans, the plants wilt when their biodiverse ecologies are fenced off, or they are poisoned with pesticides, fertilisers, and contaminated water, or chopped down, burned, and crushed by heavy industrial farming and military equipment. Tree kangaroos, wild pigs, cassowaries, and birds of paradise are enslaved or killed in the pet and feathers trade, fish are poisoned in contaminated streams, and when homeless creatures are adopted in an effort to protect them, they too pine away.

Chao gives a moving account of the fate of a cassowary called Ruben, hatched by villagers from an egg rescued from a deserted nest in bulldozed rainforest. She was sitting with a group of villagers enjoying an after-dinner conversation when, “During a momentary lull in the conversation, Ruben’s shy whistle echoed through the night. I smiled and commented on how sweet his song was, and how lucky we were to have such a cute pet among us”. Her friends immediately fell sad. One old woman explained how mistaken she was. “This is no song, sister. This is a weeping. This is the cry of the cassowary. Can you not hear the sadness, child? Does it not rip through your heart with the speed of a hardwood ngef (Arenga pinnata) arrow? We hear only a weeping, a lament. We feel the grief of the khei (cassowary) as it seeps through our skin and bone. We hear death and mourning in its call. No longer wild (liar) or free (bebas), the cassowary has become plastik (plastic).”

In this “more-than-human ecology of hunger”, the oil palm too is hungry (lapar)—and this is exactly how the Marind people describe it—but it is voracious and antisocial, not unlike a kid throwing a tantrum in a supermarket, except that it does far more damage by insatiably devouring the rainforest, all living things in it, its social life, its identities, and its cultures, turning even cassowaries into “plastic” things, and extending all the way to rotting the teeth of people who insouciantly consume its products on the other side of the planet. Territory-gobbling roads and towns are also lapar and the Marind people very well understand that the governments, corporations, and obscenely rich individuals that are fuelling their fires and machines with plants, animals, humans, and traditions as they go devouring everything that is beautiful, valuable, and meaningful around them, are greedy things contributing nothing but rot to the world. They know all too well that hunger is a political phenomenon. National food security discourse dictates which bodies and ecologies must be fodder (literally, biofuel), to produce junk food for others.

Greenwashing organisations like the World Wildlife Fund, established by dodgy characters like the racist Duke of Edinburgh and Nazi-linked, leading man of the Lockhart bribery scandal, Prince Bernhard of Holland, as an elite club of an anonymous thousand-plus richest people in the world, influencing global corporate and policy-making power, and “setting up ‘round tables’ of industrialists on strategic commodities such as palm oil, timber, sugar, soy, biofuels and cocoa”, argue that oil palm boycotts aren’t “helpful”. No, of course they aren’t helpful for WWF funders, among them Coca-Cola, Shell, Monsanto, HSBC, Cargill, BP, Alcoa, and Marine Harvest. This pretence that there are sustainable solutions for the sugary rot of KitKat, is yet another smokescreen (obscuring everything like sooty clouds rising from burning rainforest to the extent of even halting air traffic) to hide the fact the West Papuan call for a boycott of KitKat and other palm oil products is a profoundly moral stance, challenging western consumption practices and all the lies underpinning them.

The names of many oil palm products, reveal how they lie (Nature’s Bounty, for example) and that they are nearly all “indulgent” (Pampers, for example). Lists might be boring but some names should be mentioned to show how the wreckage of most of what is good about human existence is wreaked by more than just a few useless, “indulgent”, corruptive products. They involve food retailers and companies like Aldi, Booths, Ocado, Spar, Monde Nissin, Vbites, Mitsubishi, Eat Natural, Nature’s Bounty (ultimately owned by Nestlé), Thai Union, Food Heaven, Almond Dream, East End Foods, Müller, Koko; drinks companies like Redbush Tea Co, Healthy Food Brands, SHS Group, Nichols, R. White’s, Fruitshoot; coffee shops including Soho Coffee Company, Caffè Nero, Caffè Ritazza, Coffee Republic, AMT Coffee, Esquires, Harris and Hoole, Muffin Break, Boston Tea Party, Puccino’s, and Bewley’s; fast foods, among them Leon, Domino’s Pizza, Yo! Sushi, Burger King, Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, KFC), Itsu, Subway, Greggs, Pret A Manger; restaurant chains like Wahaca, TGI Friday’s, Giraffe, Mitchells and Butlers (Harvester, All Bar One), Greene King. Whitbread, Pizza Express, The Restaurant Group (Chiquito, Frankie and Benny’s, Wagamama), Azzurri (ASK), Jamie’s Italian, Colgate-Palmolive and Nestlé getting the worst ratings; perfumes like Holland and Holland (Chanel perfume), Shiseido Company Limited (Dolce and Gabbana perfume), Inter Parfums (Jimmy Choo, Karl Lagerfield, Oscar dela Renta, Paul Smith, Gap, Banana Republic perfumes), Pacifica, Bliss, L’Occitane, Coty (Max Factor, Wella, plus perfumes for Adidas, Burberry, David Beckham, Calvin Klein); Natura Cosmeticos (Aesop), Suntory (F.A.G.E), Wahl, The King of Shaves, Lansinoh (Earth Friendly Baby), Baylis and Harding, Koa (John Frieda, Molton Brown), Crystal Spring, PZ Cussons (Morning Fresh, Original Source Charles Worthington, Imperial Leather), WBA Investments (Boots, No7, Soap and Glory, Botanics), Tom’s of Maine, Superdrug, Midsona (Urtekram), Laverana (Lavera), Logocos (Logana, Sante), Li and Fung (Vosene, Clinomyn toothpaste), Church and Dwight (Arm & Hammer, Pearl Drops, Arrid, Batiste), Revlon (Revlon, Almay, Mitchum), Bull Dog, Clarins, Edgewell (Banana Boat, Wilkinson Sword, Carefree, Bulldog Skincare for men), and Holland and Barrett; and cleaning products including Mcbride (Frish, Surcare, Planet Clean, LimeLite), The London Oil Refining Co Ltd (Astonish), Enpac (Simply), Lilly’s Eco Clean, Active Brand Concepts (Homecare), WD-40 (1001), Jeyes (Jeyes, Bloo, Sanilav, Parozone), and Procter and Gamble (Fairy, Head and Shoulders, Pampers, Always).

Rainforests are essential for the planet and all life on it. The ethical reach of the West Papuan boycott has the same scope as Karl Jasper’s insight about the all-embracing nature of metaphysical guilt, because the rot in a child’s teeth resulting from capitalist consumption practices is tangible and often painful evidence of the rot throughout the whole system that peddles—as essential for human wellbeing—commodities that kill wondiwoi tree kangaroos, kill people, kill planet Earth, and where life, in the plans of the richest men, will be confined to the “strategic freedom” of “indulgent”, “intelligent” bunkers.

Mar 28, 2025, 7:51 AM ET

Christian Solidarity International’s statement against expanded land exploitation and military occupation provokes reaction from government of Indonesia

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, March 28, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ — The indigenous peoples of West Papua face renewed threats to their land rights, Christian Solidarity International (CSI) warned at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 28.

In an oral statement delivered during the 58th Session, CSI’s Abigail McDougal recalled that since assuming office last fall, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had announced a revival of the government’s transmigration program to settle non-indigenous people in the province of West Papua. In addition, he had authorized the creation of two million hectares of new rice and sugar plantations, and a 50 percent increase in production capacity at the region’s Tangguh liquid natural gas facility.

“These projects threaten not only the third largest rainforest in the world and one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, but also the land that the indigenous peoples of West Papua call home,” CSI’s Deputy Director of Public Policy and Communications stated. According to Amnesty International, the resulting environmental degradation would pose an “existential threat to the people of West Papua.”

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“These projects threaten not only the third largest rainforest in the world and one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, but also the land that the indigenous peoples of West Papua call home.”

 Abi McDouga

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The planned projects would entail an increased military presence in West Papua, which has been subjected to military occupation for decades. This “is particularly concerning,” McDougal said, “as Indonesia’s parliament last week amended the country’s military law, removing checks on the military’s power.”

West Papua is the easternmost region of modern-day Indonesia. While Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, the indigenous peoples of West Papua are almost completely Christian

West Papua was made a colony of the Netherlands in 1898, and was administered separately from Dutch-ruled Indonesia. It was only handed over to Indonesia in 1962, thirteen years after Indonesia became independent. This decision provoked widespread protests and an independence movement that continues until today.

With more than 79,000 West Papuans already internally displaced by military operations, protecting Papuans’ land ownership is an urgent imperative, McDougal said.

The UN’s 2021 Durban Declaration and Program of Action on combatting racism calls on states “to ensure that indigenous peoples are able to retain ownership of their lands and of those natural resources to which they are entitled under domestic law,” she recalled.

“Christian Solidarity International calls on the government of Indonesia to halt its transmigration program in West Papua, protect indigenous land rights, and allow international rights monitors to enter the region,” McDougal concluded.

The Indonesian delegation responded to CSI’s statement during the general debate, stating that they “reject the allegation that the Indonesian people in the six provinces of Papua are subjected to…discrimination” and pledging to “continue dialogue with all stakeholders, including with the local communities, to ensure their voices are heard.”

Reacting to the Indonesian delegation’s reply, CSI’s Director for Public Advocacy, Joel Veldkamp, said, “There could not be a greater contrast between the Indonesian government’s assurances at the Human Rights Council, and what we hear from our friends in West Papua – that Indonesian government-led projects cause them to fear for the very survival of their people.”

“We reiterate our call to the government of Indonesia to halt its destructive campaigns in West Papua.”


About CSI

Christian Solidarity International is an international human rights group campaigning for religious liberty and human dignity.

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Joel Veldkamp
Christian Solidarity International
+41 76 258 15 74
email us here

CSI at the UN: Indonesia must protect indigenous land rights in West Papua

 HANS NICHOLAS JONG 26 MAR 2025 ASIA

• More than 250 members of Indigenous and local communities gathered in Indonesia’s Merauke district to demand an end to government-backed projects of strategic national importance, or PSN, which they say have displaced them, fueled violence, and stripped them of their rights.
• PSN projects, including food estates, plantations and industrial developments, have triggered land conflicts affecting 103,000 families and 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of land, with Indigenous communities reporting forced evictions, violence and deforestation, particularly in the Papua region.
• In Merauke itself, the government plans to clear 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) for rice and sugarcane plantations, despite Indigenous protests; some community members, like Vincen Kwipalo, face threats and violence for refusing to sell their ancestral land, as clan divisions deepen.
• Officials have offered no concrete solutions, with a senior government researcher warning that continued PSN expansion in Papua could escalate socioecological conflicts, further fueling resentment toward Jakarta and potentially leading to large-scale unrest.

JAKARTA — Hundreds of Indigenous people and civil society groups in Indonesia are demanding an end to government projects that have seized their lands, fueled violence, and stripped them of their rights.

In the second week of March, more than 250 members of Indigenous and local communities affected by projects classified as being of strategic national importance, or PSN, gathered in Merauke, a district in Indonesia’s Papua region bordering Papua New Guinea.

Over four days, attendees shared their experiences of displacement and suffering caused by PSN projects, which include roads, dams, power plants, industrial estates and plantations.

The communities represented at the dialogue included those impacted by food estate projects in the provinces of North Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, Papua and South Papua; the Rempang Eco City project in the Riau Islands province; the Nusantara capital city (IKN) project in East Kalimantan; the Poco Leok geothermal project in East Nusa Tenggara; extractive industries related to biofuel in Jambi; various projects in West Papua; and the expansion of oil palm plantations across the wider Papua region.

Some community members have been displaced from their ancestral lands. Others, who continue fighting for their land rights, face violence at the hands of the military and police.

According to the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA), there were 154 PSN-related conflicts from 2020 to 2024, affecting 103,000 families and 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of land. The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) received 114 complaints related to PSN between 2020 and 2023, including allegations of forced evictions, violence against protesters, labor abuses, environmental degradation, and attacks on journalists.

With PSN projects continuing, affected communities at the Merauke dialogue, facilitated by the NGO Pusaka, issued a declaration on March 14, calling for the projects’ termination in front of government officials.

“We demand the complete cessation of National Strategic Projects and other so-called national interest projects that clearly sacrifice the people,” the declaration read in part. “The perpetrators of state-corporate crimes must return all stolen wealth to the people and immediately restore their health and living spaces in all areas sacrificed in the name of national interest.”

Pusaka director Franky Samperante said the “Merauke solidarity declaration” marks the beginning of resistance to the destruction of communities and their living spaces.

“Our next task is to strengthen the Merauke solidarity movement and continue rejecting and resisting PSN and other so-called national interest projects that blatantly sacrifice the people,” he said.

History of PSN

The PSN framework was formalized during the administration of former president Joko Widodo, in office from 2014-2024. His government prioritized infrastructure development as a key driver of economic growth, issuing a regulation in 2016 that outlined a list of priority projects to be developed under the PSN framework. The main benefit to developers of such a designation is eminent domain: the government can invoke this power to take private property for public use, ostensibly to fast-track development, but often at the cost of people’s rights and environmental and social impacts.

Between 2016 and 2024, the government initiated 233 PSN projects, with a total investment value of around $378 billion.

When Prabowo Subianto took office as president in 2024, he continued and expanded the PSN program. His administration retained 48 ongoing projects from the previous administration, while adding 29 new projects, increasing the total PSN count to 77 projects. The new projects focus on food security, energy sovereignty, water infrastructure, and mining and industrial downstreaming.

The awarding of PSN designation to various projects has drawn criticism for bypassing regulatory hurdles, fast-tracking approvals, limiting oversight, and granting the government eminent domain rights to evict entire communities. Many projects primarily benefit large corporations and politically connected businesses rather than local communities, despite the government claims that they drive economic 

Food estate

One example is the food estate project in Merauke, where agribusiness giants have secured vast concessions, often at the expense of Indigenous land rights. Carried over from the previous administration, the project aims to clear 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land in Merauke — two-thirds of it for rice fields and the rest for sugarcane plantations — an area 45 times the size of Jakarta.

From the start, Indigenous Papuans living in the project area have protested, saying they were never properly informed or consulted. Many say they fear for their safety due to the heavy military presence and pressure from fellow community members who had already sold their land to developers.

Vincen Kwipalo, a 67-year-old Indigenous man from the Kwipalo clan of the Yei tribe, has been vocal in opposing the project, as the planned concessions overlap with his clan’s ancestral lands.

“We are not selling our customary land. The forests and hamlets owned by the clan are not large. We want to manage them ourselves for our livelihoods and food sources, for our children and grandchildren,” he said.

Vincen said that on Dec. 11, 2024, he was confronted at his home by five machete-wielding men who verbally assaulted him, calling his family “stupid.” He called the police, and the attackers fled when officers arrived.

The next morning, a larger group returned with machetes, threatening to kill him. The situation deescalated only after the village chief intervened.

Vincen said he suspects the attackers were from a neighboring clan that’s been embroiled in a land dispute with his clan. He said this clan had already sold their customary land to a sugarcane developer for around 300,000 rupiah ($18) per hectare — the same offer made to Vincen’s family, which they refused.

Vincen’s wife, Alowisia Kwerkujai, has stood by his side throughout the ordeal. For her, the forest is the source of their life.

The 1,400-hectare (3,460-acre) customary forest claimed by the Kwipalo clan is a thriving ecosystem that’s home to towering trees and diverse wildlife such as cassowaries, wallabies, parrots and eagles. It provides food, materials for daily needs, and is a source of income through rubber and teak plantations.

“That’s why I won’t give the land to the company,” Alowisia said as quoted by BBC Indonesia. “Where would we go? I am a mother raising children, and this land is for them.”

Disappearing forests

Despite the opposition from Indigenous peoples, the food estate project is moving ahead.

As of January 2025, 7,147 hectares (17,660 acres) of forest and savanna had been cleared in Tanah Miring district for the sugarcane project, while 4,543 hectares (11,226 acres) of forest and mangrove had been cleared for the rice-related infrastructure, such as roads and a port, in Ilwayab district, according to data from Pusaka.

Senior officials have claimed there are no forests being cleared.

“There’s no forest in the middle of Merauke,” said the country’s energy minister, Bahlil Lahadalia, who’s in charge of a government task force that manages the project. “There’s only eucalyptus [trees], swamps and savannas.”

However, a spatial analysis by TheTreeMap shows that the ecosystems cleared for the rice project are mostly Melaleuca swamp forests, which are dominated by paperbark trees (Melaleuca leucadendron). These forests are unique ecosystems that appear sparse but are rich in biodiversity and store large amounts of carbon.

A 2016 study in Australia found that Melaleuca forests there store between 210 and 381 tons of carbon per hectare — higher even than the Amazon Rainforest on a per-hectare basis.

“However, Melaleuca forests are often overlooked because, unlike dense rainforests, they are less diverse and have more open structures,” TheTreeMap wrote in a blog post. “These characteristics are sometimes mistaken for signs of degradation, leading to misconceptions that Melaleuca forests are degraded ecosystems, which are not worthy of conservation.”

The construction of a new road for the rice project will further threaten these ecosystems, it added.

Direct plea

During the Merauke dialogue, Vincen addressed government officials in attendance, including the Deputy minister of human rights, Mugiyanto Sipin.

He described how the arrival of the sugarcane plantation project under the PSN scheme had torn apart the social fabric of his community, with families and clans who refuse to sell their land being pressured, intimidated and pitted against each other.

“Sir, can you guarantee my safety if I get killed in the forest?” Vincen asked Mugiyanto as reported by BBC Indonesia. “The government doesn’t see what’s happening. Forget about Jakarta — even the local government here isn’t paying attention to how we are being pushed to fight one another.”

He also made a direct plea to President Prabowo.

“Mr. President, you see the development happening, but you don’t see that we, the Indigenous people, are being forced into conflict — into bloodshed,” Vincen said. “Where else can we seek legal protection?”

Despite growing evidence of human rights violations, Mugiyanto offered no concrete solutions beyond saying he would relay the concerns to higher authorities.

If left unchecked, PSN projects like the Merauke food estate are a “ticking time bomb” waiting to explode, warned Cahyo Pamungkas, a senior researcher at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

In Merauke, the food estate project could further escalate tensions, deepening resentment of Papuans toward Jakarta, he said.

If ignored, these warnings foreshadow a crisis unlike any in Indonesia’s history, with “an escalation of socioecological chaos,” warned affected community members in their declaration.

Citation:

Tran, D. B., & Dargusch, P. (2016). Melaleuca forests in Australia have globally significant carbon stocks. Forest Ecology and Management, 375, 230-237. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2016.05.028

Banner image: Local and Indigenous communities affected by PSN projects in Indonesia gathered to read a declaration calling for the halt of PSN projects in Merauke on March 14, 2025. Image courtesy of YLBHI.

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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – The Masyarakat Adat, or indigenous people, of Yoboi village of Papua are adopting new ways to turn their native sago palms into high-value products, reducing processing time from several days to only five hours and opening doors to wider markets.

Papua has the second largest sago palm plantations in Indonesia, but customary sago processing remains largely manual and time-consuming, resulting in low-grade products that offer limited benefits to local livelihoods and food security.

Now, however, members of the Masyarakat Adat Yoboi can process sago into value-added products that meet food safety standards by using a small-scale sago processing unit, built through the support of a project jointly implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and now owned by the community. FAO and Analisis Papua Strategis (APS) have trained 30 community members to sustainably operate the units and diversify sago-derivative products.

“With the sago processing machine unit, Yoboi people have become economically independent. It is the right solution for us in Yoboi, who have large sago forest areas in Jayapura,” said Sefanya Walli, Head of the Yoboi Adat Village, in a written statement released by the UN Indonesia.

Sago, a sacred staple for Masyarakat Adat, has been considered an alternative source of carbohydrates to help ensure food security and diversity.

However, efforts remain necessary for sago products to be accepted and consumed by the wider population, said Elvyrisma Nainggolan, Chair of the Plantation Products Marketing Group, Directorate General of Plantations, Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Indonesia.

“Sago-producing village groups play an important role, and they need to be empowered so they can process sago into flour, which can then be turned into sago-based cakes and even noodles, like in Yoboi. That way, it is hoped that Masyarakat Adat Yoboi’s sago derivatives could become more widespread in markets across the archipelago and even go global in the future,” said Elvyrisma.

community’s sago-based products and connect them with potential buyers, distributors, and market actors, FAO, Masyarakat Adat Yosiba (Yoboi, Simforo, and Babrongko), and Analisis Papua Strategis launched today the first Sago Festival in Yoboi, Jayapura.

During the festival, women and other members of the Masyarakat Adat Yoboi presented live demonstrations of their sago-based dishes, such as noodles and rice analogs, showcasing their market potential. A business networking session allowed community members, small and medium sago entrepreneurs, market actors, and cooperatives to be connected and leverage business potential and opportunities. Over 100 people participated in this festival, including members of Masyarakat Adat, business representatives, and the public of Jayapura.

Head of Papua Province Plantation and Livestock Agency, Matheus Philep Koibur, expressed his appreciation toward the Sago Festival for showcasing the high potential of sago commodities to meet food needs, environmental preservation, and economic improvement of the community.

“The Sago Festival has opened up a big room to promote our sago to industry players who can then turn them into high-value products. Moreover, it is hoped that people of other sago-producing districts are motivated to follow the footsteps of Masyarakat Adat Yoboi,” said Matheus.